Startup Claims Quantum Leap in Countering Photo ‘Wobble’

Chip technology has steadily increased the resolution and lowered the cost of digital cameras. But there is an annoying side effect, one that a Silicon Valley startup called InVisage Technologies believes it can eliminate.

Josh Mazgelis

The “wobble” effect causes the pole and railing to appear slanted.

The problem–variously called “wobble,” “Jell-O” and “rolling shutter”–is a kind of distortion that can occur when photographing moving objects using the cameras that typically come with cellphones. Elements in images that should appear straight can wind up looking bent or slanted. A golf club or baseball bat, for example, might be perfectly straight but appear to bend in a photo of a swing.

This doesn’t happen in cameras with mechanical shutters, which are excluded from cellphones and other applications to reduce cost, size and moving parts that tend to break, says Jess Lee, InVisage’s chief executive. These time-tested components create exposures of images all at once. In cellphone cameras, by contrast, image sensor chips ordinarily record images in a gradual process from top to bottom; as a result, an object in an image may have moved before the process of reading the data is completed, causing the distortion.

InVisage’s proposed solution is a previously undisclosed benefit of its core technology, which attracted attention when it was announced in March. The company makes sensor chips that include a layer of material known as quantum dots to detect light, rather than relying on the pixels on the chip for that task. As a result, Lee says its sensors can create better images in much lower light conditions–without the need for a flash–than sensors used in other cameras.

Since the pixels on InVisage’s chips aren’t needed for light detection, they can store data for other purposes, Lee says. InVisage uses them to capture the electrical charge from an image all at once, eliminating the gradual recording process that creates the distortion. The company calls the technology QuantumShutter, and says it can help both still and video cameras.

InVisage, which has been working on its technology since 2006, is targeting high-volume smartphones with camera resolutions in the range of five to eight megapixels, Lee says. It expects to have samples of its chips later this year, with commercial production at the end of 2011.

People briefed on the concept says it sounds promising, but note that InVisage has to prove that its chips work as advertised and can be produced in high volume. One is Jeff Moy, a director of business development at Samsung Electro Mechanics, a unit of the Korean company that makes camera modules.

“We are waiting for samples from these guys,” he says. “It hasn’t been in mass production. Let’s see if they can take it from the lab and into products.”